Swan Keyes is one of the leading white female voices committed to dismantling white supremacy and other forms of oppression in the United States. A consultant, psychotherapist, writer, and racial justice educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she delivers trainings, lectures and workshops nationally, specializing in helping white people investigate their racial conditioning and become better allies against racism.


Swan is a teacher with the UNtraining (untraining white liberal racism) and also facilitates interactive workshops using participatory theatre to address racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and other forms of social oppression.

Swan also serves as Community and Multicultural Program Manager at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, in Woodacre, California.

A Caucasian Jewish woman with over 15 years of Buddhist meditation practice, Swan infuses teachings of compassion and humor into all areas of her work, creating loving and challenging environments to interrupt the isms and catalyze change on the individual, group and social levels.

While often engaged as a guest lecturer, Swan's passion is in engaging communities in dialogue and action related to their own struggles. Her direct, spontaneous, and caring style helps people access their own strengths to move into creative alliance-building for social change. She balances intellectual exploration of the nature of systematic oppression with experiential examination of the cultural conditioning that keeps institutional racism intact on a day-to-day basis within groups as well as in the larger society.

Clients include universities, nonprofit organizations, spiritual centers and others committed to social change, including Occidental College, Sarah Lawrence College, SFSU, UC Berkeley, California Institute of Integral Studies, Laney College, Merritt College, New College of California, Pacific School of Religion, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, the Wright Institute, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, NASCO, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley, and numerous others engaged in social change and racial justice work.